Hair ties make your legato and two-hand tapping cleaner because you don't have to mute the unused strings. Sweeping is more of a right hand technique, so I wouldn't say that Hair ties make your sweeping cleaner.

Hair ties make your legato and two-hand tapping cleaner because you don't have to mute the unused strings. Sweeping is more of a right hand technique, so I wouldn't say that Hair ties make your sweeping cleaner.

Main Entry: 1cheat
Pronunciation: 'chEt
Function: verb
transitive senses
1 : to deprive of something valuable by the use of deceit or fraud
2 : to influence or lead by deceit, trick, or artifice

putting a hair tie, towel, other dampener on the guitar strings is without a shadow of a doubt a form of cheating. cheating effects more than just speed. incase you aren't a guitar player-
putting a dampener allows you to cheat on mainly one thing. sweep picking. at least 50% to making a sweep sound good is swiftly muting the strings after you fret them. the dampener does that for you, so you dont have to be paying such attention to your palm while you play.

that isnt to say jim uses it as a crutch to hide a lack of ability. its a small little helper to allow him to be a little less focused while playing. hes without a doubt a technically able guitarist and i bet he sounds great without a dampener. but he uses one, and its cheating by definition

John Petrucci from Dream Theater always uses one in the studio.
Joe Satriani uses his hand.

Anyway... I was wondering... Doesn't Arsis have Open notes in their songs? If they do, wouldn't the string dampening affect that?

Yeah, it does, especially since you're using it to mute strings. You can move it off the strings, or close enough that it's not affecting them (which actually takes some skill if you're not used to it, I'd guess). Some people also mute everything at the base, but that kinda screws any chance of good distortion. I'm pretty sure Petrucci does this, and it's only to ensure that it's clean while in studio. Of course...he pulls it off flawless live...so...

I've yet to try it, but I don't really see it as cheating if you're not relying on it, and you really can't rely on it to clean your tone up. There are some 8 finger tapping parts that are almost impossible to mute without something muting for you. (aimed at whoever said it was cheating...)